This study examines how travel influencers Jessica Nabongo and Oneika Raymond use Instagram in a process I call “digital culture bearing,” employing the platform to nurture wisdom about Africa. They combine images, captions, hashtags, and geotags to share information about nations within the African continent with principally Black populations. Employing critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) to interpret how race, gender, global travel, and cultural knowledge promotion intersect within Instagram, the study analyzes the platform and practices of digital culture bearing, theorizing new ways of understanding how Black women situate themselves in Africa for their online networks. Ultimately, the study offers considerations of what it means to be a culture bearer in the twenty-first century digi-sphere and articulates new conceptualizations of Black internationalism within social networking sites.
Viewing Nigerian film, known as Nollywood, in online platforms provides African immigrants living in the United States with digital spaces to engage with the African continent through films with relatable Pan-African themes. Nollywood on social media sites (YouTube and subscription services IrokoTV, Amazon, and Netflix) marks the Nigerian film industry as a transnational participatory movement that enables immigrants to use the technology at their disposal to watch and comment on films, connect with their cultural values, and become a part of a global digital community of dispersed Africans and African descended populations. Thus, immigrants become a part of a Nollywood focused digital diaspora, a cultural space that illuminated the plurality immigrants negotiate on and off the continent.
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